Inheritance - Interlude: Lisa

Shoutout to First for streamlining the hell out of this chapter!

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Tuesday May 10th, 2011

On the list of potential futures Lisa had imagined for herself, being in a boardroom was… distressingly close to the top.

Granted, her parents had practically been villains in their own right, and so using her power to wrench control from the hapless normal suits was expected.  They had ambitions far in excess of their own talents and reach, and it wasn’t hard to see the path from ‘gaming the stock market’ to ‘owning enough stock to trigger a board election.’  It would have been paved with Lisa’s own blood, sweat, and most importantly, tears.

Lisa doubted very much that her parents would have expected this particular path, however.  A maximally hostile takeover of a Nazi stronghold by way of multiple murderous rampages wasn’t anywhere on her bingo card, especially with the Teeth.  If she was being honest, they hadn’t expected it either, given that the Teeth were normally the epitome of ‘disorganized crime.’

She sighed quietly, slumping briefly in Kaiser’s overly-ornate chair at the head of the otherwise spartan steel table.  The leather chairs were comfortable, given that several of the people on the board were his direct underlings in the Empire, but all of them were much more plain.  Stupid, unnecessary posturing.

Then again, it wasn’t like the Teeth were immune to that themselves given Taylor’s literal skull throne, complete with Hookwolf skull mounted on top.  Lisa herself was nursing a mild headache partially stemming from her bout with Sophia in the fighting pit last night, putting Amelia’s various experiments with her body to the test while kicking the ‘is Tattletale a real member’ can down the road a few more weeks.

Oh, Amelia.  Flirting with the freckled girl had been the best impulsive decision that Lisa had ever made, and not just because it ensured the continued survival of life on the east coast for the next few years.  At the time it had seemed like she was taking a big fall for Team Humanity, but then she had become unexpectedly attached to the ex-heroine.  Amelia was, once she had a few good nights sleep and a hug, a rather delightful partner.

Which was something Lisa never expected to have, given Power’s usual insights.  Those had trailed off steadily as Lisa got to know the Teeth’s newest member.  Her rules — which were proving to be unhealthy long term — gave her a decent respect for established boundaries and communication.  They spent many nights just laying in bed together talking through ideas Amelia had, and in a few cases — always with Lisa’s spoken permission — trying them out in a controlled way.

Lisa gripped the edge of the table and gave it an experimental tug.  It didn’t move, but then again she wasn’t really trying; her leap of faith when she first offered to let Amelia experiment on her had paid off handsomely.  Amelia tinkered with her constantly, pushing the envelope on better, stronger, faster… even if Lisa’s power was happy to report that she really wasn’t quite human anymore.

Unfortunately, experiments to mitigate her Thinker headaches were shelved until Amelia had a better understanding of brains.  The grumpy biokinetic was making good progress, but her girlfriend was still scared of her own intrusive thoughts changing a ‘small tweak’ into something catastrophic.  Lisa’s power had been all too happy to point out that Amelia feared what she might unintentionally change, and her girlfriend’s physical needs were starting to weigh on her mind…

Taylor and Chrissie could deal with that part.  Lisa had been pleasantly surprised to discover that cuddle piles were an activity she could enjoy, but going further was out of the cards, even if Power was mercifully silent on idle ramblings about the Butcher after a few early slips.  Some capes were simply too scary even for the voice in her own head.

So with Amelia’s fortuitous crush on the Butcher and Taylor’s own efforts to keep things afloat with Chrissie, all Lisa had to do was make sure they didn’t kill each other over a misplaced comment.  That and making sure that Taylor and Chrissie accepted that she just wasn’t interested in anything physical, the signals she got from them during the kiss demonstration were almost enough to make her retch.  She didn’t even need Power for that one.  Amelia at least was respectful, even if there was a secret hope of a ‘small tweak’ that Lisa would likely need to crush in the near future. 

Hopefully getting Taylor and Chrissie in on things would be enough to keep all of their minds off of doing stuff with her and those signals would trail off.  Her power was great and all, but sometimes she wished for an off button when horny teens were involved.  If it didn’t she might just have to bow out of the relationship, even if she would miss the cuddles. 

And just like that she had a headache, just thankfully not a Thinker one.

Lisa glanced at the clock, putting the Butcher’s lovelife out of her mind (another thought she would never have expected) as well as her own (doubly so on that front given Power’s usual contributions) Lisa took a steadying breath and focused on the meeting to come.  With only thirty six percent of the outstanding shares in her pocket — largely thanks to Theo Anders — she had been just barely able to secure the acting chairmanship through Medhall’s own archaic bylaws.  The mutual funds and other institutional investors had grumbled, but it was essentially the same path Max had used to take over from his father ten years earlier.  They obviously didn’t expect her to win the next scheduled election.

Oh, how wrong they were.

The other board members started arriving a few minutes before the scheduled start time, beginning with the obvious Empire sympathizers first.  Ernest Marshal was a longtime ally of the Anders, first partnering with Richard in the eighties and sticking with his son after his death.  He was the only one besides Lisa who was aware of how intertwined the Empire had been with Medhall, an arrangement that had enjoyed his enthusiastic support.  His fortune and influence were rooted in the banks, both in the United States and abroad.

Susan Harrell was a different problem entirely.  She owned a big chunk of one of the local pharmacy chains, and her husband had been a key part of the Empire’s drug distribution network.  But she had seen the writing on the wall (in blood) after her husband had been killed during the Empire’s messy dissolution, and going legit carried much less chance of getting all of her property burned down by the Teeth.

Next came Andrew Carter, a ruthless but otherwise boring corporate lawyer whose singular concern was next quarter’s profits.  Herman Templeton followed on his heels, the sole black man anywhere near the C-suite and the only reasonable person on the board.  He was also a ruthless corporate lawyer, but had grown up in the Bay and wanted to see his hometown succeed.

None of them bothered to trade pleasantries as they took their customary seats around the table, leaving the chair to Lisa’s right conspicuously empty.  Lisa was fairly sure that all of James Fleischer’s credentials had been faked by the Gesellschaft, but his presence on the board was due to major investments by a real German conglomerate.  Krieg’s apprehension by the feds made it hard to attend, and Lisa knew that she was going to be unpleasantly surprised by whomever showed up.

At the very least, it was going to be someone in the Elite’s pocket.

Lisa would never admit it, but she was pretty fucking nervous about the state of the city.  Bastard Son’s presence meant that the uppermost Elite saw the Teeth as competition to be eliminated instead of subsumed, despite the fact that he was of limited usefulness against the Butcher.  Thus, the Elite had started parallel schemes to take over in the more normal way, up to and including going after a major employer that had a history as a gang front.

How the Elite — assuming it was, in fact, them — had convinced Krieg to trigger his proxy representative clause was a question that had plagued Lisa all morning, and contributed quite a bit to her headache.  Ultimately, she didn’t have enough information to know one way or the other, but she did make a mental note to figure out if Krieg was even still in custody.

Then the person they had sent walked into the room, and all rational thought fled Lisa’s mind.

“Hello, Sarah,” Frederick Livsey said, voice every bit as oily as she remembered.

White-hot indignation flooded Lisa’s veins, and she barely resisted throwing her laptop through his disgustingly smug face.  She refused to give him the satisfaction of invalidating all of the effort she had put into seizing control of Medhall, even in death; a few deep breaths later, she was able to bite out a response.  “Father.  I see that you’re keeping elitist company, as always.”

“Indeed,” he said with his infuriating fake geniality.  “They send their regards, by the way.  We are always looking for… talented individuals.”

And just like that, Lisa’s temper spiked again.  Her embarrassments of parents had referred to her power as her ‘special talent’ in the beginning, an obvious signal to the sorts of people who would abuse parahuman children for their own gain.  He knew that she would pick up on the reference — and that she knew that he knew, and so on.  Any Elite representative worth their salt would have known that she was a cape, but her father knew the details because Sarah had been stupid enough to trust him.

This was going to suck.

Angry that he lost access to Lisa Wilbourn.  Determined to regain her power for his own use.  Promised access to her power to the Elite in exchange for their help.

This was going to suck a lot.

A quick glance at the rest of the board revealed that only Marshal had any idea what was going on.  Lisa hardly needed her augmented eyesight to pick up on the evil fuck’s tells, and it was a moment’s work for her power to realize that he was aware of more than just her relation to her sperm donor.  It seemed that the Elite had another man on the inside.

Lisa made a mental note to have both of their names added to the quest board back in the lair as soon as possible.  Admittedly, if there was anyone who she might be tempted to kill as her first, it was her father… but Teeth or no, Lisa wasn’t totally prepared to make that last step.

In reality, it was the first step.  It wasn’t hard to see how the various Teeth capes and the more successful normal members fell down the slippery slope, nevermind the ones that jumped down headfirst.  Lisa still had a conscience, bruised and tattered that it was, and it reminded her that killing her father for the approval of the Teeth would be letting him win.

However, even with Taylor’s support, the rest of the gang was eying Tattletale as a weak link.  To her eternal displeasure, many of them saw her as a squishy, annoying Thinker who was taking advantage of the Teeth for protection.  It was an extremely irritating contrast to Amelia (who made their drugs) and Madison (who impressed them with their various horrific transformations).  Lisa’s attempts to wrangle their disorganized crime wouldn’t pay off for months at the very least, which gave them ample opportunity to throw her into the fighting pit to force the issue.

Maybe killing her father wasn’t that bad of an idea.

Still, she couldn’t do so now, in front of everyone, so she waved him to his seat.  Anger flashed over his face, and he gestured to a second man before finally closing the door to the conference room.  “As Mr. Fleischer’s duly appointed representative, I took the opportunity to contract some additional legal counsel for these complicated times.  I’m sure the board won’t mind more level-headed voices in the room.”

If the man had actually been admitted to the bar, Lisa would eat her shoes.  More importantly, he was almost certainly either a cape or one of Bastard Son’s less-empowered and more sane goons.  He hid the tells quite well, but Lisa’s augmented eyes caught the tension in his stride and the way that he catalogued the room for threats before taking a seat on the opposite side from Lisa.

“If that’s everything,” Lisa said, ignoring her father, “then I hereby call this meeting to order.  There’s only two major items on the agenda, so let’s hear from our overseas partners first, then our new local major shareholder.  After that, we’ll open the floor to discussion.”

Normally, giving the coveted first slot to the Elite’s stooges would have been a losing proposition, but if there was one thing that Lisa was sure about, it was that they weren’t Gesellschaft plants.  The two organizations hated each other, and not just for ideological reasons.  The Empire was supposed to be the Neo-Nazis’ foothold in the USA, given that they had been rebuffed everywhere else by the Elite.

There was a lot of history there, but the practical upshot was that Lisa’s father didn’t have the relevant powerpoint presentation ready.  “In the face of our current situation, I hardly think it is relevant —”

“I disagree,” Carter cut in.  “Steiner Pharmaceuticals is our biggest partner, both as a supplier and client.  As James’ proxy, I’m sure you have an update on why the normal order volume has gone down by an order of magnitude for next quarter.”

Lisa sat back, carefully hiding her grin when her father shot her a glare.  She hardly needed her power to know that the Gesellschaft front was pulling out of the partnership rather abruptly.  The Elite were trying to capitalize on the same thing, after all — but it would have been Kreig’s responsibility to explain that to the rest of the board, had he not been in prison.

Her father managed to maintain some composure.  “I don’t have an answer for the board at this time.”

“What about you, Ms. Wilbourne?” Harrell said, giving Lisa a glare of her own.  “Your firm is local, so you should appreciate the damage caused by a supply chain disruption.  And you’ve obviously done your research, or Mr. Anders wouldn’t have appointed you.”

“A decision we all still oppose,” Marshal interjected.  “Clearly Max’s wisdom did not extend to his son, if he sent us a teenage girl.”

Even Templeton joined with the rest of the board in grumbling in approval, which only served to encourage Lisa to spite them even harder.  “Well, at least I think you would agree that age is just a number, right Mr. Marshal?”  The banker drew everyone’s eyes at that, but Lisa plowed on.  “But let’s not get distracted.  To answer your question: yes, I do have an update.”

A few clicks brought up a powerpoint of her own.  “The short answer is that Steiner is leaving us high and dry.  That should be pretty obvious, given that they’re a Gesellschaft front and Max Anders had a Hamlet cameo —”

“You dare!” Marshal started, rising halfway from his seat only to be cut off by Carter.

“Oh shut up Ernest,” he snapped.  “I told you that focusing too much on the Germans would come back to haunt us.  James had his finger on the scale over there and you knew it.”

Marshal glanced around the room for support, only to discover stony silence from the others.  Lisa forced her amusement down.  “Right.  Well, our procurement teams have been hard at work, and we’ll be able to make up the difference on most of the common materials with just a bit of premium.”

She clicked the powerpoint forwards, showing numbers to that effect.  Carter nodded slowly, running the numbers in his head.  Begrudgingly impressed with results.  Very unimpressed with Elite unpreparedness.  Good — the unabashed capitalist was always going to be the easiest sell, provided that Lisa did her due diligence and put the shareholders above literally everything else.  The angry glares that her father kept sneaking her were just icing on the cake.

One down, two to go.

The next few slides were almost self explanatory, giving Lisa a few precious moments to think.  She had predicted the Elite’s misstep with the Steiner update, but that was just the opening salvo.  Now that everyone in the room was aware of how much damage the Gesellschaft had done, Lisa needed to make sure that they picked her shell company as their new partner.  She had a silver bullet, after all.

What she couldn’t predict was the Elite’s own solution.

“Any questions?” Lisa asked when she reached the last slide.

“This solves the immediate issues of being able to produce most of our bulk items,” Harrell said, begrudgingly.  “We’ll be able to satisfy our local commitments, at least.”

“But many of the more specialized products will be in short supply,” Templeton pointed out.  “Cancer treatments in particular, which will impact all of the hospitals in the city…”  He trailed off, giving Lisa a significant look.

Smart man.  She wondered how he had figured it out.

Teeth capes, including Tattletale, are fundamentally incapable of discretion.

Well fuck you too, power.

“That dovetails nicely into the next topic.  As you are all aware, Theo Anders named me acting chairwoman in my capacity as the founder of Epione Research.”

Marshal snorted.  “A firm that barely exists.”

Lisa feigned indifference at the insult, but internally she was sweating bullets.  This was her second gamble, made all the more dangerous because she wasn’t just gambling herself.  Ultimately, Amelia had agreed, but only because it gave the not-quite-ex-healer an opportunity to assuage her own beleaguered conscience.  That comodizing her powers would also be a pointy thumb in New Wave’s eye was the cherry on top.

“Perhaps, but we employ probably the single most useful parahuman in the entire industry,” Lisa countered, instantly making everyone sit up — except for her father.  Her brain immediately kicked into gear, but she had to finish the presentation first.  “Because while the various misguided laws Congress has crammed down our throats make it impossible for most parahumans to work, there are loopholes for consulting.”

“What use is a Tinker?” Carter asked, irritated.  “They can’t explain their work.”

Lisa flashed her signature grin.  “Oh, but Panacea isn’t a Tinker.  She’s had to learn everything the hard way, no black boxes from her power.  All of that time spent as New Wave’s little healer gave her an unrivaled understanding of human biology.  She can actually collaborate with our biochemists.”

Templeton nodded slowly.  “She could dramatically cut development costs for, well, everything.”  The others murmured in agreement, including Marshal; they were all obviously imagining a world where Medhall’s primary cost was reduced to zero — at least for next quarter.

“Can we trust her, though?” Livsey asked, cutting the daydreams short.  “Her defection is already well known to practically everyone, and it’s not like the Teeth have a reputation for honest business dealings.  They’re much more well known for their… debauchery.”  He shot Lisa a significant look.

Was expecting comment to hurt Lisa Wilbourne.  Confused by lack of reaction.  Disappointed by lack of reaction.  Comment references shared past.  Comment references Reggie.

It was only weeks of having to hold her tongue around Butcher that kept Lisa from immediately retaliating, and she was rewarded by her father’s further disappointment as she kept the meeting focused.  “No one denies that the Teeth are not known for their restraint.  But Panacea didn’t join them because of some deep-seated desire for violence” — well, not too much — “but the truth is that they were the only group in town that could fight off New Wave and the Protectorate.”

Despite herself, Harrell chuckled.  “And why would she want that?”

“It’s not common knowledge, but her mother tried to effectively sell her to the Protectorate.  She had enough business sense to know that her so-called contract would have signed away her merchandising profits, and instead decided that she was done working for free.  So really, you should think of the Teeth as her protection detail, keeping Epione’s staff safe and local.”

Reactions to that phrasing of the situation were varied.  Carter and Templeton were already on board, despite their complaints, and were mostly wondering how much Panacea would charge.  Harrell was instead wondering how Panacea’s involvement could benefit her other ventures.  Livsey was pissed, which Lisa only knew from growing up with him, and the Elite goon… looked nervous?

The puzzle about the Bay continued to shift in Lisa’s head.  No one would be more upset about losing Amelia than the Elite, if only because she would make them absolutely, filthy rich with almost no effort.  However, even when viewed through the lens of the Elite’s normal methods — taking over Medhall would leave them as the sole provider able to work with her — something didn’t add up.

Livsey, of course, wasn’t going to leave her to Think peacefully.  “That’s a fine story, and if it were a reasonable group like the Elite, maybe I’d believe it.”  He either didn’t see the eye rolls from the other board members, or chose to ignore it.  “But this is the Teeth we’re talking about.  No cape has ever joined that group and just been a member.  No, they all turn into monsters in their own right, finding ever more awful depths of the human condition.”

Lisa just smirked, though admittedly she was worried about this effect.  The Butcher had already possessed a strange, alien sort of magnetism before, and Taylor was a thousand times worse.  If the more reasonable Teeth couldn’t keep her from going off the deep end, then Lisa feared that they would end up diving after her eventually.

“Well, lucky for us, Panacea is a healer,” Templeton interjected, saving Lisa the effort of coming up with a retort.  “She’s probably the most heroic cape in the whole city, if not region.”

“The advertisements almost write themselves,” Carter agreed.

A quick glance at her father revealed the truth: knows Amelia’s true power.  But even he didn’t want that to come out, in this setting at least, and instead went for another angle.  “Perhaps, but what qualifies as ‘healing?’  Can we possibly know if she, or her power, will agree with our business strategy?  What happens if she decides that chemotherapy isn’t healing?  Or that extreme procedures like gender reassignment count?”

Lisa barely heard the vocal agreement from the Empire contingent, as her power was suddenly slotting all of the pieces together.  Her parents had not suddenly become more tolerant after Lisa’s sibling killed themself — they had known how her power worked, and kept her busy so that she didn’t have time to suspect them.  And it had been so painful that Lisa hardly wanted to dig, what little there had been…

Worse, the Elite’s plan was starting to become clear.  Her father knew that his argument about gender was nonsense, and existed only to rile up the board members.  But he would only be able to fall back on such absurdisms if he — and the Elite — were confident that Epione wouldn’t able able to be effective partners with Medhall.

And there was only one way they could know that.

Lisa had to know more.  In her contemplation, the conversation had continued to slip, and luckily Carter’s cost-benefit analysis had clearly come down on the other side from the Elite.  “This is the reason we have contracts and insurance, Marshal.  Anders may have risked the whole company on his cape activities, but I doubt that Miss Wilbourne and Epione will be so short-sighted.”

“Short-sighted?” the banker hissed.  “What is short-sighted is signing over the company to a pair of teenagers!”

“For this fiscal year,” Templeton pointed out.

Marshal looked like he was about to start yelling slurs, which would be completely counterproductive to learning more about the Elite’s plans.  “Mr. Carter has the right of it.  Epione is willing to take on much of the risk in the beginning of our collaboration.”  Also known as ‘Amelia takes a huge pay cut.’  “But let’s leave these very valid concerns for the negotiating table.  I am more interested in what Mr. Livsey has to offer — assuming you aren’t here just to antagonize the board.”

Score one for Lisa — her father turned a delightful shade of red at the insult.  “Obviously not,” he snapped, then took a deep breath as the goon brought up their own powerpoint.  “We represent a consortium of biotech firms based in Seattle who compete in much the same space as Epione.”  Lisa knew that already, as they were the Elite, but the others all sat up a bit straighter.  “While we don’t currently employ anyone of Panacea’s caliber —”

He was cut off by the Elite goon, of all people as his eyes flicked to where his phone sat on the table.  “Our staffing is a trade secret.”

Unfortunately for him, Lisa’s power caught on immediately.  Do not currently have any capes of Amelia’s caliber.  Entire presentation is a lie, but they expect to employ better capes soon.  List of potential employees is very short.  Elite more likely to coerce than employ.  Elite expect to be able to coerce cape of Amelia’s power.  Amelia is among most capable parahumans in the world.  Other top biological manipulators are proper Tinkers.

Elite expect to coerce Amelia.

To his credit, the goon was watching for the exact moment Lisa connected the dots.  Of course her father would reveal the details of her power given his past association.  That moment was all the Elite minion needed, and even with all of Amelia’s enhancements she still just barely dodged a thrown pen that wasn’t even aimed primarily at her.  It cracked against the wall behind her and bounced off the steel surface, trailing ink across her phone only to land on the keyboard of her laptop.  Both devices sparked almost immediately. 

Special conductive ink — shut up power!

The attack didn’t go unnoticed, and Lisa found herself staring down a man who could and would murder her with the pens that were obviously his specialty.  As if to show off, the empowered minion twirled the twin fountain pens nimbly in each hand as he smirked at her with what should have been trademark infringement. 

“Not one for swords?” she bit out, already reaching into her pocket to crush the bug in the paper cube.  It might take Taylor a minute to arrive, but Lisa wasn’t worried about the Butcher.

She was worried about Amelia and whatever scheme the Elite was hatching.

“Now Sarah,” Livsey said.  “Surely this will be better than being beholden to murderers.” 

Lisa wasn’t about to let that slide, and she needed to play for time until Taylor could deal with whatever fuckery was afoot and make it to her.  “Like you?  You may as well have killed Reggie yourself.  She came to you for support, and you turned her away.” 

Livsey laughed, straightening his suit as Lisa spared him only the barest of attention — he was always meant to distract her, as the real threat was the one with the fountain pens.  She could probably take Bastard Son’s minion in a (mostly) fair fight, but that would mean outing that she was enhanced to the entire board.  Taylor was already taking longer than she should have, and that was prickling her power in concerning ways. 

“The Elite are civilized,” the goon retorted, holding up an arm as if holding Livsey back.  “But we would hate to lose someone so talented as you, Lisa, so why don’t we just sit back down and —”

Something pricked at the edge of her senses, and Lisa was already pushing away from the desk just as flames erupted, knocking everyone else back with the force of the explosion.  She didn’t need her powers to know the source.  A lone figure appeared, still wearing the street clothes she had left in that morning; she also held one of her imposing revolvers in each hand. 

“Which of them are Elite?” Taylor spoke coldly, demanding an answer. 

Extremely pissed.  Homicidal.  Will kill anyone Lisa indicates without hesitation.

Oh fuck, just what the hell had she missed?